In Defense Of Bad Lyrics

[@12tone]

Support 12tone on Patreon to help us keep making cool videos! www.patreon.com/12tonevideos Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) Go watch Patrick's video! It's really good! kzbin.info/www/bejne/kITXnIiueJmcgpY Also thanks to LowSpecGamer for lending me his voice for the Santayana quote! Check out his channel too! www.youtube.com/@LowSpecGamer 2) Songs used in this video, in order: -Court Of The Crimson King, by King Crimson -Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen -Dragula, by Rob Zombie -Scum Of The Earth, by Rob Zombie -Black Widow, by Children Of Bodom -Fire And Rain, by James Taylor -On A Plain, by Nirvana -Black Hole Sun, by Soundgarden -Fitzpleasure, by Alt-J -Come Together, by The Beatles -I Am The Walrus, by The Beatles -Losing My Religion, by REM -Blazing Arrow, by Blackalicious -One Week, by Barenaked Ladies -The Sound Of Silence, by Simon & Garfunkel -The Sound Of Silence, by Disturbed -You Oughta Know, by Alanis Morisette -The Alternative Polka, by Weird Al -The Call of Ktulu, by Metallica -Doctor My Eyes, by Jackson Browne -Black Summer, by Red Hot Chili Peppers -Bawitdaba, by Kid Rock -Puritania, by Dimmu Borgir -Take Me To The Pilot, by Elton John -Call Me Maybe, by Carly Rae Jepsen 3) Arguably, the dog in the next Dragula stanza _could_ be the same lifeform from the previous one, but that analysis falls pretty quickly if you consider any other lyrics in the song. Again, local meaning is possible (although strained) but consistent global meaning isn't. 4) As further evidence that Alexi Laiho is hard to understand, every lyric site I can find lists the words for the clip I played as "The fire's more right than my eyes" even though I'm like 99% sure it's actually "The fire's pouring through my eyes", partly because that's what it sounds like and partly because that's a more coherent sentence for a human being to write and then sing. Someone probably mistranscribed it early on, and that mistake has propagated because it's not obvious enough to detect. (Or I'm just wrong about what he's singing. That's technically possible, I suppose.) 5) I was intentionally a little lax with my other criteria when demonstrating songs that didn't quite qualify in some regard, because finding examples that fit exactly three out of four was very difficult. Sound Of Silence, especially, might fail on the grounds of worldbuilding, but having the two different well-known versions to compare in terms of maximalist aesthetic was too useful an opportunity to pass up. That said, in reality, all of these things exist on spectrums anyway. 6) In case this wasn't clear, when I said vibes lyrics were, in a sense, more musical, that "in a sense" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. There are plenty of ways of conceptualizing music that don't prioritize things like imagery, that was just a useful inroad to the argument I wanted to make. 7) Also, in case you were wondering, that Santayana essay is called "Egotism In German Philosophy" and you can find the quote here: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Egotism_in_German_Philosophy/Chapter_XV 8) It's worth noting on Bawitdaba that, once other lyrics do come in, they aren't particularly close to counting as vibes lyrics. They're pretty standard from the perspective of meaning. 9) Of the songs I did count, Puritania is probably the most controversial inclusion, because it does have some gestures toward an apocalyptic narrative, but it's so inconsistent and unclear on the shape of that apocalypse that I view it as falling under the "consistent theme" umbrella more than any sort of actual worldbuilding. Again, feel free to disagree, it's all made up anyway. 10) To be clear, I chose intentionally to not discuss the influence of drug use on the artists who wrote these lyrics, because "This is weird so the artist must have been on drugs" is, to my mind, a pretty lazy analysis. Many of them probably were, but given that many musicians who wrote relatively coherent lyrics _also_ did a lot of drugs, the causal link is tenuous at best, and "The artist made an artistic choice" remains a more insightful framework.

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

What'd be your opinion on how Skinny Puppy's writing style relates to this category? It's arguable that a lot of their lyrics probably have stories or statements to make but they're so buried in the word salad that teasing them out can often be pretty much impossible to even prove whether or not it's there. They certainly would seem to fit all the other criteria

[@nightwing36s]

I'm a bit confused by E.G.G.M.A.N being quoted in the image title and not in the video, it seems like it doesn't fall into the "vibes" genre? It seems to fail the "what is a vibes song" checklist fairly early in.

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

@@nightwing36s "I am the walrus" also has that line

[@jadasc]

8) The lyrics you cite aren't his, of course; they're an interpolation of "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang.

[@inerlogic]

So does "Blinded by the light" fall under this, or is the music too "chill" and disqualifies it?

[@davegajda5554]

I'd disagree that Sound of Silence could be considered as having "vibes lyrics" in any way. The imagery is abstract, sure, but it absolutely tells a story of a vision had about modernity becoming a religion, the isolating nature of capitalism, and the vital importance of maintaining connections as a community, rather than a collection of individuals. It's more akin to "All Along the Watchtower" than "By the Way"

[@johnmoran8515]

Absolutely, without music it reads roughly as narrative poetry

[@jeremiahsweeney6577]

I was thinking the same, though I'd describe the imagery as pretty concrete and the meaning is what's not immediately clear. The dream S&G describe has a very definite setting and narrative.

[@macmurfy2jka]

I totally agree, but I feel that writing lyrics that resemble vibe lyrics is core to Paul Simon’s writing style. Take for examples, Kodachrome and Boy in the Bubble. Both songs lean for more heavily into the vibe lyrics style, but do it in such away to invoke specific emotions and feelings that ultimately tie the songs together where if feel 12tone’s definition aims at more atmospheric songs. These are good examples of Simon’s lyrics veering very close to being vibes lyrics as they are far less linearly narrative but invoke a state of being/headspace. Kodachrome is obvious meant to invoke warm nostalgia of the revelation while growing up with an enriching tech popularization during childhood/young adulthood. Boy in a Bubble is about the overwhelming conflict between our rapid wondrous tech advances paired with how the more things change the more they stay the same when it comes to violence. Now we can contrast this with America, which is a set of vignettes that build the story of a couple searching for the “American Dream.” This one obviously is about the experiences of two specific characters and takes place within their lives, specifically the start of a road trip on a Buss. But, Paul Simon still leans heavily into creating a vibe with disconnected and specific snippets of the experience to indirectly reference the feeling intended in the song. And all of the above mentioned sounds songs lean heavily onto their music to help convey the vibe. Really, it’s just a testament to Pau Simon’s songwriting abilities. He so deftly uses this technique that he consistently conveys very abstract yet specific vibes in his songs while seldom actually directing referencing them, all while being able to create narratives that intertwine with the vibe and also stand on their own.

[@drewjohnston4309]

I agree, Sounds of Silence may not be a "narrative" necessarily, but it is clearly describing something very real using fairly thin, transparent metaphors. It's describing the era it was written in and making predictions of the future.

[@davegajda5554]

@@macmurfy2jka I agree on the principle you're stating, that checks out, but I disagree that it counts as vibe lyrics, by 12Tone's given explanation, since he specifically called out King Crimson for the exact same style of songwriting that Paul uses in SoS. Paul is an amazing songwriter, to be sure, and I think there may be a case that other songs could fit the definition. SoS just doesn't fit it, because a key component is that they have to be syntaxtually meaningless, and, in this song, they aren't.

[@juliannafranchini7975]

I still stand by "rah rah ra a ah / ro ma ro ma ma / ga ga ooh la la" as one of the most inspired pop song lyrics to come out in the past decade and a half. PURE vibes. I am feeling EXACTLY the emotion that lady stefani "gaga" germanotta wants me to feel and last i checked, that's what every piece of art strives to accomplish

[@Brigand231]

Yeah, I would have been on board if he'd called it "emotion" instead of "vibe" and just said that all music is about emotion and some songs bring it out in different ways, like lyrics. You're spot on, also, with dialing it back to "art" and not just "music". We all interpret what we experience differently than everyone else and that's ok. With a lot of his examples, I saw perfect imagery in the lyrics. Just because he didn't doesn't mean he can discount them. Similarly, I feel no emotion in seeing a banana taped to a wall, but some people do. That's cool for them, I can't tell them it's not art. I can only say it's not art to me.

[@pedroivog.s.6870]

I coudn't agree more with you

[@isaachiggs1925]

Huh… I’ve always found that one nearly impossible to connect with.

[@evilmonkeywithissues]

What the hell emotion does rah rah ra a ah ro ma ro ma ma ga ga ooh la la convey, if you don't mind my inquiry? I'm genuinely curious.

[@Brigand231]

@@evilmonkeywithissuesIt's scary and exciting, or even exciting because it's scary. It's thrilling because it's unknown.

[@phoebemoon6952]

Great video but I dispute the claim that bob dylan never could’ve written the line “a bullet hole in your fist” I present my evidence: “he just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette”

[@gaffer2602]

What song is that?😂😂

[@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721]

I mean, Bob Dylan was a king of vibe songs. I guess it might not fit the criterion of not forming a narrative, but I think an narrative expressed through incongruous lyrics is just as much of a vibe as anything.

[@ficus3929]

Stuck inside of mobile

[@phoebemoon6952]

@@gaffer2602 Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.

[@Mumon7]

Nooooooo!!!! There's actually a point to his lyrics; e.g., Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, is just conveying estrangement and being bummed out in a place one doesn't want to be in. @@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

[@canolathra6865]

Even mentioning Sound of Silence seems odd, as it is a song that, while esoteric, definitely has both narrative continuity and an underlying meaning.

[@Schadrach42]

To be fair, I feel like someone out there would try to fit any lyrics where the interpretation is non-obvious (at least to them) but the music and lyrics definitely have a mood.that comes through strong. For example, I could see someone making that claim of This Corrosion by Sisters of Mercy when in reality it's basically a very long quasi-goth diss track with the imagery around everything abstracted into a second level of metaphor, which Andrew Eldritch wrote aiming specifically at Wayne Hussey. Or Blue Water by Fields of the Nephilim with lyrics like: "Just move back stepping outside yourself / Feel I'm falling upwards looking at hell / Sea green, if you know what I mean? / Please unleash this animal inside / Out of my mind" which sound meaningless unless you have experience with the kind of altered state of consciousness the song is about. But that's a running thing for several FotN songs, since they touch on the occult, mysticism and shamanism a lot and ecstatic states are a well they visit more than once. By comparison, their Psychonaut (Lib III) comes a lot closer to being vibe lyrics, what with the seemingly unrelated verses, references to multiple, largely unrelated traditions as well as fiction, and having a part in a dead language.

[@jhutt8002]

Yea. And it's absolutely brilliant in it.

[@katherineheasley6196]

Yeah, it operates on dream logic, as the narrator is recounting a dream, but there's a narrative there.

[@aleonimation]

i think it also tells a narrative of what Paul Simon wanted to convey in the song: people disconnected from each other and not helping fix that problem (the constant silence)

[@ctrlcf]

I’d make the same argument about Black Hole Sun tbh

[@tuxedojunction9422]

Your Weird Al example gave me a chuckle. It's the End of the World as We Know It by R.E.M. comes to mind. The chaos of the verses fits with the theme of the chorus, but it's still a lot of disconnected chaos.

[@123four...]

R.E.M in general is like that, and partially why I love them. The whole Murmur album is basically incomprehensible but still really good.

[@wyattstevens8574]

​@@123four...Although this wasn't a pastiche of REM (probably) Weird Al's "Hardware Store" has a similar spitfire section in the bridge to the verses of TEOTWAWKI *and* We Didn't Start the Fire!

[@gabe_s_videos]

I remember reading something about Nile Rodgers' songwriting process where he said, even if the lyrics aren't particularly deep or brainy, they have to be ABOUT something. For example, "Good Times": there's kind of a theme to it (it's reappropriating post-prohibition songs and language for the late '70s), but it's largely there to create a mood, and that mood is "Things were bad for a while but now they're good, so let's have fun!" A more recent example that comes to my mind is "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO. Again, not deep, philosophical lyrics, nor are they ones that tell a linear story, but you know exactly what feeling they're trying to evoke: it's a party, we're rocking at the party, and having fun while rocking at the party. I also remember an interview with Redfoo where he basically echoed Nile Rodgers' philosophy, that yes, the lyrics are simple, but the choice of words still matter. I'm also reminded of "I Want It That Way" and "Backstreet's Back," which are vaguely cool or emotional phrases strung together to evoke a particular feeling, In those cases, it's because the guy who wrote them isn't a native English speaker (which would also explain a LOT of Europop lyrics).

[@cooperlovera1156]

I am legitimately shocked that Beck's "Loser" didn't get mentioned in the video. You started describing the concept, and the whole time I'm sitting here nodding and saying to myself "yeah, like Loser. When's he gonna mention Loser?!" 😂 I feel like that's the ultimate vibes lyrics song.

[@bobbauer7928]

Except, beck lyrics and music are intentionally emotionally detached. While the sonic soundscape is accurate and lack of story is on point, his music and lyrics are alienating instead emotionally sincere. And that i think is what separates it from what the author identifies as 'vibe music'

[@dantemurphy7873]

That was the first song that I thought of as well. I think it does qualify, in that detachment is an emotional state, even if it is not an emotion itself...like black is a color, even thought it is really the absence of color.

[@monophone903]

​@@bobbauer7928you're telling me that there is not a single amount of emotion or expression conveyed in "New Pollution", "Derelict", "where it's at", Jackass" or "Ramshackle", "Lord Only Knows"? No conviction, no sincerity at all? Yeah, sorry, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen

[@gabrielmead0ws]

A couple years ago I saw a video where they actually posited that Loser DOES tell a story about a race car driver. It made a lot of sense at the time. It was super interesting, I wish I could find it.

[@charliekahn4205]

My dad told me that Beck made Loser by writing down a bunch of phrases and shuffling them around

[@ForestFire369]

"And that's the key to understanding this song. Rob Zombie... is a dog." I'm shooken

[@slinky6415]

"Ameno" is an interesting song to think about in this context. It uses words that sound like latin that are just gibberish. To most people, we can't tell the difference between fake and real latin, so they just used sounds that fit together in a way that creates a mood that they want. However, because they arent real words, theres no imagery outside of the sound cliches themselves. What do you guys think?

[@paulamarina04]

honestly id argue the style of vocal performance and use of "latin" itself already invoke quite a strong imagery

[@bearantarctic5843]

Pseudo Latin = Best Latin

[@EarlyOwOwl]

I don't know if I'd count gibberish words as lyrics tbh. Sure you can sing them but since they literally don't mean anything then they serve the same purpose as a musical instrument. Like a choir but more specific. "Vibe lyrics" may have no meaning as well but at the end of the day they're still using real words to evoke concepts or images.

[@eatpant4ever]

Dorime 🙏

[@nivrap_]

This is actually how the vocal music for the NieR series was created. Emi Evans, the lyricist/vocalist for the tracks, created a "chaos language" that borrowed elements from many real-world languages, but wasn't uniquely identifiable as any particular one. Words were crafted with the intent to derive emotion from the associations we have with the various languages that were used to create "chaos language"

[@chainringcalf]

I think you unintentionally explained to me why I don't learn lyrics quickly and often don't listen to them at all, as if every song was instrumental. I grew up on all the examples you played, including the ones that were "nonsense but not vibes" and the other exclusions. Vocals were just another instrument that sounded cool.

[@Lishtenbird]

There is a whole Japanese genre of modern music called "denpa" songs (the term itself is a long story about electromagnetic waves affecting people in weird ways). It's often fast, bright, intensely cute anime-style songs with mostly rapid, nonsensical lyrics that fill the "canvas" of the song with human-like sounds. Those can be sound markers that invoke certain associations (including culture-specific terms), but primarily, they are there to convey a feeling of the song more directly and freely than a thoughtful explanation would. It's a fascinating genre, so if you are open to really different experiences - give them a go!

[@UraNoSora]

Denpa songs refers usually to songs that get stuck in your head like its some kind of electromagnetic wave brainwashing you or what most of us here would call earworms, which makes the genre very subjective. The way their lyrics works is kinda like its not the actual meaning they want but rather just the sound it makes. Songs like Akari Ga Yatte Kita Zo is 90% onomatopoeias and Nyan Cat which is just Nya though not Japanese would probably also fit into this category.

[@jackstrawful]

Reminds me of the soundtrack for Vib-Ribbon, a classic Japanese PS1 video game - or maybe I just thought the lyrics were nonsensical because I was mishearing them thru their heavy accents, lol

[@LieseFury]

​@@jackstrawfulvib-ribbon's lyrics are in japanese

[@Merennulli]

Are there any examples you'd recommend? I've enjoyed JPop and a lot of anime themes for decades because they infused emotion into the words without me understanding the lyrics, so I'm really curious if the experience is different when that was the artist intent. Reol's "Edge" is a great recent example of what I'm listening to, but the lyrics translation kind of fits together into a whole picture so I don't think it's what you're talking about and Google is being less than helpful when I search for "denpa music".

[@UraNoSora]

@@Merennulli Denpa songs is itself a rather vague category. In the more traditional sense it would be songs like Neko Mini Mode. For JPop/JRock in general, based off of your example I would say '劣等上等'(BRING IT ON) by Giga and 踊 by Ado, potentially Flamingo by Yonezu Kenshi. The lyrics of these three I think well match what this video is talking about while also being considered as Denpa songs by some listeners. Edit: actually no, the lyrics of Flamingo do piece together into a blurred story of what I believe is about a man who just broke up with his girlfriend. Its just that it uses a lot of metaphors and very uncommon words that you'd basically only see in high school+ literature class.

[@Dalenthas]

Calling Rob Zombie "Robert" killed me. Makes me imagine Robert Zombie is written on his driver's license.

[@arsenicsyndrome7602]

Robert Zombert

[@adamrozsavolgyi2947]

now that we're here, Zombie also sounds like a longer word that got shortened indicated by that "-ie" at the end, so i might as well just call him Robert Zombert

[@skalra63]

​@@arsenicsyndrome7602Robbie Zombert

[@OrgaNik_Music]

"Please, my father was mister Zombie. Just call me Robert."

[@alanacula3855]

Robert Z. Ombie.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

Dragula is based on an episode of The Munsters, where Grandpa (a vampire) entered a drag race with a custom-built race car. The imagery is abstract, it's vaguely describing someone very competitive and determined to win, using imagery of violence symbolically. Lime in the Coconut technically has a narrative, but the lyrics were chosen for their aesthetics, not their semantics.

[@RyanKinal]

I think vibes lyrics are more cross-genre than your definition might present. Intensity and over-the-top coolness seems to be the type that you're most familiar with. The vibes I'm most often interested in are chill, and I think lyrics can help with that.

[@paulariihimaki5548]

Yes! Seems like 12tone is considering only one type of vibe, although there are plenty of different vibes! Say whatever, but I'm gonna steal the term bc it's a good term, and use it how I understand it.

[@toblexson5020]

I think this is a great video, and makes a great point, but throughout the entire thing I was trying to work out why I disagree whilst also nodding along, and you finally said something that made it click in my head. "They aren't asking to be understood." This is the vibe I was getting from the video and what my mind was disagreeing with from a basal part of itself. I feel like these lyrics are screaming to be understood, but in the same way a metaphor would be understood - the meaning isn't in the meaning of the individual words, but rather in the image that the entire phrase is painting. This disagreement really sprung up with the sound of silence, which I think is heavily painting a story throughout the entire song. It might be (probably is) a different story for every person, but that's the point - it is a song about sorrow, darkness, depression and how the lack of communication inspired by those feelings deepen it even more. The 'sound' is like a deafening silence, an anti-sound if you will. It could reference the JFK assassination, 9/11, a personal dark time, etc. depending on the person. I agree that it they are vibe lyrics, and I agree with this entire video more or less, but I can't help but disagree with your personal definition of vibe lyrics. Which is a really weird situation, but I think one that sits well here, because the point of these songs is to target something deeper than a complex story or message could convey. It's putting into words something that can't be put into words. They're so universal because they don't have one concrete meaning, they have hundreds, but each of them should be considered as intentional, because the song was constructed to convey such overlapping concepts such as emotions and humanity.

[@CrystalLily1302]

Yeah I feel the same, it clicked with sound of silence because the words have meaning that just BEGS to be uncovered, they don’t seem meaningless under scrutiny they evoke meaning that is both clear and vague

[@anicemyth]

excellently worded :)

[@signesartandanimation]

Yeah sound of silence clearly has a meaning to me (one that is quite similar to the one that you described.) one easier to decipher than bohemian rhapsody in my opinion, which he said had to much of a story to fit in this category.

[@finlandtrip2360]

ive always thought of them as impressionist lyrics. the point is to feel how they feel. it skips the middle man of storytelling words -> narrative -> emotion & meaning (traditional) versus words -> -> emotion & meaning (vibes)

[@jeremiahsweeney6577]

Yeah, I really agree with the point that the songs *are* wanting to be understood, but in a less concrete way. I felt like most of the songs listed do have intended meaning, and even songs without intended meaning could have unintended meaning a listener might pull. I feel like Sound of Silence has a super-clear narrative, it's just that the meaning of that narritive is less immediately clear. Fwiw, I took it to be about the increasing disconnection between people and the "worship" of man-made things.

[@rantingrodent416]

This seems deeply related to appreciation of music in other languages. When I'm jamming to a Babymetal song, even if I have once looked up the lyrics, I'm just absorbing the vibes when I actually listen to the song.

[@CaptainCathode]

I think that Babymetal make it pretty clear that they want you (the listener) to give them (Babymetal) chocolate. 🍫

[@adelinaarmstrong9423]

you've got a pretty darn good point here! sticking to Babymetal, i absolutely ADORED their song Megitsune (forgive me, i forgot the kanji) before even really looking into the lyrics because the chants in the background sort of sold it as super fun to be a part of! then i learned it was a complete girlboss anthem and i loved it even more :]

[@AleX-je2sw]

Pretty interesting angle. You've pretty much put into words what I always felt at some level. Being a non-native English speaker I mostly stick with music sung in languages other than my native one because even if I understand the lyrics, the extra step of translating them in my mind means I don't pay as close attention to them as if I was listening to something in my native language, and thus foreign songs create a more coherent musical vibe for me, because I don't overanalyze the lyrics as much.

[@pinkchungusbunny8660]

I am the Eggman.

[@Elec.Balloon]

I got the master plan Edit: Why is there another song with "Eggman" in its lyrics?? ):

[@iskandertime747]

Koo koo ka joob.

[@49problemz]

I am the Walrus.

[@ekschiz]

You are the eggman. Yes

[@averypennington1506]

It’s what I ammm

[@disgruntledfaerie]

Beck's "Odelay" is a master class in vibe lyrcs.

[@hpoz222]

They Might Be Giants have a lot of lyrics that might fit into this category, although I feel like a lot of their songs also have an intended literal meaning which just goes over some people’s heads

[@hpoz222]

The End Of The Tour is the best example I can think of offhand, the individual verses kind of have a narrative going but the way it all fits together is just vibes

[@RRM_Personal]

I was gonna bring up TMBG! A lot of the first album is weird disjointed lyrics, as well as a good amount of their newer stuff. Like, I dare you to find meaning in Cage and Aquarium or I Sold My Mind to the Kremlin.

[@RRM_Personal]

​@@hpoz222Honestly I don't think this is a great example because it has a clear story that can be picked up on, being a female musician dying in a car crash while on tour, while something like Cage and Aquarium is just a bunch of nice sounding words shoved loosely together into a song

[@thummumcrysanth]

And then there are TMBG fans who are *absolutely* certain there's a literal meaning, when the lyrics are vibes lyrics. :P

[@ospero7681]

TMBG, by and large, fail the same test as Barenaked Ladies - they write vibes lyrics, but very intentionally so.

[@wendelynmusic]

Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum. One of the classics from the 60's. The words almost sound like they're saying something and really aren't at all.

[@lokenecummings47]

I've seen whole essays written about the "incident" that inspired "...sixteen vestal virgins/ Who were headed for the coast".

[@TheMister123]

Oh! Oh! Several Talking Heads songs do this! "Burning Down the House" is a great example. It's just a series of phrases that work well together in the Heads' attempt at a Funkadelic pastiche.

[@Bowblaxian_Tricknology]

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏼

[@gonkdroid4prez539]

Beck's "Sexx Laws" is great example of this style, with nearly every line being a phrase which sounds awesome (I mean just listen to the first line), but mostly that same thought is only carried for a few lines at a time, meanwhile these words that just perfectly fit your ear are underpinned by a triumphant, climbing melody sounding out on trumpets, with a complex layer of bass underneath that, a keyboard adding some high punctuation to the lines, and, weirdly, a banjo that you only really notice once everything above it drops out.

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

I’m a bit baffled that you ever considered Losing My Religion’s lyrics for this category. It’s not meaningless in any way- it’s a song about unrequited love, how it drowns you in painfully obsessive thoughts that bounce between feeble hope and utter despair. How you fear making a fool of yourself by letting slip how you feel, even as you know that’s your only chance of having those feelings reciprocated.

[@altrag]

That's.. somewhat the idea here though. The individual lines are fairly meaningless (maybe not to the degree of Dragula, but still) yet you're able to derive meaning about the song as a whole. You _feel_ what it means more than _understanding_ what it means.

[@Fantumh]

The funny thing is there are plenty of Michael Stipe lyrics, particularly from the early years, that would qualify, at least as much as Cobain's lyrics.

[@mattgilbert7347]

​@@Fantumh Murmuring his way to a Reckoning. He tells Fables.

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

@@altrag But uhh, no? It’s quite easy to understand what it means. Just because he’s not outright bluntly singing “I love you, I think about you a lot, I’m so sad you don’t love me back” doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out, if you pay even a modicum of attention. 12Tone himself makes clear that he isn’t just talking about when lyricists use poetic language.

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

@@Fantumh Something something “that’s great, it starts with an earthquake…”

[@yamomwasthebomb7159]

Can't believe no one said this yet, but to me, the king of "vibes music" is U2. You always know *exactly* how to feel about a song ("With or Without You" is longing and frustration, "City of Blinding Lights" waffles between endless lostness and eternal hope, "New Year's Day" is tension, "Vertigo" is excitement), and sometimes there's one powerful line that we gravitate towards. And maybe it's just me, but any time I've tried to go hunting for specific meaning, I've been thwarted by researching 9999 different interpretations or finding a "coherent" narrative that falls apart literally one line later. Really loved this video and it made me think really differently about listening to music.

[@justSPOONERok]

Dance Gavin Dance’s scream vocalist, Jon Mess, is a fantastic example of these vibe lyrics. Highly recommend for anyone looking to explore this in a pop-punk setting.

[@24c0xy]

Came to the comment section to say exactly this, glad someone beat me to it!

[@jennieivins]

I always thought of this type of music as poetry music. Poetry doesn't have to make sense in its wording, it needs to make sense in its feeling. The images it creates need to make you feel what the poet is feeling. Those types of poems with "nonsense" lines express those emotions like nothing else can. You don't get caught in the story and held down by trying to interpret it. You get flashes of images and feelings that blend into one another and flow like emotions do in real life. Sometimes it has to be nonsense for the words to carry the weight of the meaning. You can just take a line like "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" and write the meaning out in plain speech and get the same feeling from it. Same with vibe music. You can't get those feels across with the same depth as you can when the lyrics speak like poetry. "Nonsense" lyrics paired with music can set a scene in your head that could never exist in real life. You can't explain true love. You can't explain true pain or sadness. But you can put together tiny pieces that flow into each other and produce those feelings where nothing else can.

[@swadloom40]

I think this counts: Don't Let's Start by They Might Be Giants. Their lyrics are usually pretty silly across the board but still have pretty great storytelling and a specific concept they're going for (Ana Ng is my favorite example of their songwriting) but I'm pretty sure Don't Let's Start doesn't have any specific meaning. Either way it perfectly captures a sort of cat-like, hyperactive energy with occasional hatred of life thrown in randomly. Also I totally agree with the concept of engaging with art on its own level, you worded something I've been thinking for a while!

[@Trixiethegoldenwitch]

I can't believe you went this whole video without mentioning Beck. My time is a piece of wax, fallen on a termite that's choking on the splinters. Anyways, great video!

[@amswain1]

I can't even count how many people have told me they don't really listen to lyrics anyway. That's mind-boggling to me personally but I guess everybody experiences music in their own way. I like trying to listen to each part as well as the piece as a whole.

[@jmacd8817]

I can't focus on the music and the lyrics at the same time, as well as the fact that in most songs, I can't understand the words. Part of it is my hearing, part of it is something I don't understand; I don't understand the words. So, I rarely bother, and just enjoy the music.

[@gaffer2602]

I used to not pay attention to the lyrics (probably because of unmedicated ADHD) but now I listen to a song and immediately listen to it again afterwards looking at the lyrics. And then listen to each individual instrument sometimes😅😂😅

[@gaffer2602]

Even then, I don't read into the lyrics.

[@mycroft174]

@gaffer2602 for real lol, i was listening to a steely dan song and on like the 20th listen in a week i was like wait this song has horns?

[@sledzeppelin]

I don't comprehend the lyrics until like my 5th listening, minimum. Before that I'm much more focused on the instrumental portion.

[@drakkondarkspell]

The Sound of Silence tells a very clear story.

[@josiethompson5739]

Paul Simon is a master of telling stories through song! A Poem on the Underground Wall is one of my favorites!

[@waitingforguitar6991]

Talking Heads "Speaking in Tongues" album is an excellent exercise in using the sounds of words and vibes without imparting literal meaning.

[@tommyamoeba9220]

i remember david byrne saying in an interview that the lyrics on this album were from overheard conversations he wrote down in a notebook. is that too much an exercise in craft to be vibes? the proof is in the songs i guess and they're pretty vibey.

[@cubecookie3333]

I think that a lot of Tall Hall and earlier Lemon Demon songs do fit quite nicely in this category (I find "Taken For a Ride" and "Sky Is Not Blue" are good examples of them), though a lot of them are frequently made more in a comedic tone and fall into the more tongue-in-cheek thing mentioned in the video, especially for Lemon Demon

[@datDrowningFish]

I remember doing an exercise in high school where we analyzed song lyrics like poems. We got to pick songs and I chose Metallica’s Enter Sandman. I thought I was honestly just bad at literary analysis but looking at the lyrics now, they really are just cool and spooky sounding, not necessarily full of meaning or telling a story.

[@a-s-greig]

Did an exercise like that. Chose REM's "The End of the World as We Know It." I left a lot on the table there, but I got the stream-of-conciousness and dream-like weirdness angles of it, right? ...Right.

[@patrickmcgraw9168]

I remember an exercise like that. And the conclusion I took away from the exercise was that, most of the time, to try to read song lyrics as poetry is to miss a lot of the point.

[@nolenashburn3375]

I think RHCP do this really well, all of there songs are extremely captivating sonically and always get you to sing along even though most of the lyrics don’t make sense when you try to think about them as one cohesive story

[@naattxxnaattxx7055]

It depends which though. Some contain vibes lyrics, and some do not.

[@nolenashburn3375]

@@naattxxnaattxx7055 Oh for sure not all of their songs are like that, but when they do it’s top tier.

[@ProjectLunis]

@@nolenashburn3375 examples pls?

[@Subropontes]

Noel Gallagher is a great example of beautiful nonsense lyrics that sound great and Noel Gallagher himself admits that he only does that kind of line because it fits the melody and it sounds cool. Like “slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball”.

[@reaganharder1480]

You know, for as much as that line is apparently self-admitted nonsense, within the context of the song I think it really makes an interesting image about the perception of time and especially how weird it can get when looking back to the past.

[@anthonywestbrook2155]

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe

[@TerribleLotus]

You know how something instantly and surprisingly clicks? Well, that happened to me here. This concept of using words for their coolness and how they fit the vibe and emotions of a song - it’s almost a relief. It’s a realization of: this is how to describe a lot of music I like. I’ve never had words (groans) to fit this concept before. My brain shuts off whenever I have to listen to words in a poetry-like format. I have to force myself to pay attention to lyrics in musicals or i completely miss what they are singing about. I sang in a children’s chorus for years, memorized hundreds of song lyrics, but could I really give you a detailed description about what the song was about? In most cases, not really. But I do hear words and phrases. So to have someone describe to me how there are some songs where the words are there to enhance and emphasize the awesomeness of music rather than tell me about something, is a massive revelation. Plus I tend to just like the overall sounds of the pieces with vibes lyrics rather than, say, a ballad. So thank you!

[@hopelesslydull7588]

3:20 Not to defend Rob Zombie on lyrics but a blackjack is a leather weapon where the head is wrapped around a metal ball or a metal rod runs up the whole length of the thing. They often cracked bones and regularly tore skin.

[@Julathegreat]

My dad was a fan of Yes in part because he didn't have to over-listen to the lyrics. Not all of them, but I think Close to the Edge is a perfect example.

[@Julathegreat]

I mean, I, too, am a giant fan of yes, I just happen to have all of the lyrics memorized. "Mind Drive" is not a song I usually hear people talk about, and that's a shame, same with "the revealing science of God", and I think both could fall into this category too. If you want something shorter, "No opportunity necessary" just makes me *feel*, you know?

[@paulross9635]

I came here to talk about Yes. You doesn’t have to dig very deep to find vibes lyrics. I’ve been singing “Roundabout” and “I’ve seen all good people” for nearly 50 years without having a clue what they are talking about

[@Taschenschieber]

@@paulross9635 Same for Heart of the Sunrise, tbh. "I feel lost in the city" is the one coherent line in that song.

[@SingularlyNaked]

@@paulross9635 I recently learned that Roundabout is, well, not "about", but maybe "inspired by" driving back home after a long time on the road. Which, yeah, hey that makes sense. To me, this seems like a perfect example of a vibes lyric. It's not a narrative road song, it's a series of vignettes and thoughts. A vibe.

[@Taschenschieber]

​@@SingularlyNaked I think they were also stoned when they wrote "Roundabout".

[@timcroft9223]

A quick look into the Dadaist artistic movement (it's primarily a VISUAL art movement) might be a worthwhile exercise for you, or anyone who wants to get deeper into this idea. All about the synthesis of word, meaning and art

[@gaffer2602]

Damnit. I was hoping for an "I Am The Walrus" breakdown

[@patrickmcgraw9168]

And do they really say "smoke pot, smoke pot, everybody smoke pot?"

[@brennanclement8582]

What's the reason for including spectacle as a criterion? Lyrics that are calmer or quieter still give *a* vibe, and those vibes are just as important as the spectacular ones imo.

[@Frownlandia]

There are two examples of vibes lyrics that always come to mind for me, Brian Eno and Jon Anderson from Yes. Because they both spoke in interviews about how their writing process starts by singing nonsense sounds and turning it into words from there.

[@ChunterInfo]

So did Sting, Phil Collins, and Peter Gabriel, they're just better at turning their funny sounds into narrative... usually

[@KayrBayr13]

I personally find Losing my Religion as having vibes lyrics, just different vibes from what you are talking about. It's more of a confused vibe that pulls you along with it into its self reflective state.

[@rachelc2136]

The 'Hopelandic' used by Sigur Ros is an excellent example. Switching between their natural language and phonemes that 'just feel right' for the music, not only allows international listeners to feel included in the musical process (we understand you don't speak Icelandic) but also gives native speakers another level of intimacy with the songs.

[@richardmetzler7909]

I think that falls more into the "obvious gibberish" category that 12tone mentioned. "Invented languages in music lyrics" might be an interesting topic for another video, though (with Magma's Kobaian as another prime example).

[@mattstefon4878]

Lennon as a vibes lyricist I can see, but I think Bob Dylan at least at times was one too, at least in the mid-60s. It depends on what you mean by “world building,” but he had a lot of phrases that didn’t work on their own and can’t really be quotable in anything like an epigram or maxim, but they have-if not meaning-then some gut-level value that helps to hold the song together. Parts of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “My Back Pages” kinda fit, or even “Gates of Eden.”

[@mattstefon4878]

Or maybe I interpreted your statement a bit too strictly, and maybe misinterpreted it? It seems that a lot of Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” could fit the “vibes lyrics” criterion. There’s meaning there but you don’t listen for the meaning and maybe don’t see it outside of the instance of listening to it and the performance-or maybe I’m already getting away from the argument?

[@Merennulli]

I have to say, this is freeing to hear. I've been taught to believe all these cryptic lyrics always add up to some deep overall meaning that I'm failing to get (usually with a cop-out for why it can't be explained to me), but if they're just creating images to evoke emotion and not describing something concrete to the whole song, that's good and I can appreciate that. There are some, like Smoke on the Water, where I actually don't get it because I don't understand the lingo, in-jokes and references, and that one in particular I just accepted in the same "I'll never get it" pile as Dragula until your previous video. It would be nice to know going in if I'm supposed to be listening for a ballad, grafting imagery into a picture of an emotion, or just feeling the vibe, but the vibe is always there or it isn't really connecting emotionally with me (emotional language is not universal as I think you've mentioned before). And even that is something that can change with experience - I didn't feel anything from "Gangasta's Paradise", for example, for many years until I gradually learned the emotional language it used from similar music that was closer to my experience. As a side note, though - Logical inconsistencies in the plot ARE bad because they take the audience out of the experience. To put it in music terms, it's like Rob Zombie stops for a few seconds in the middle of his song for a coughing fit and just leaves that in the version that gets published. It's totally human that he had to cough, but if it's not intentional and just breaks the flow, it's not good musical production. And not bothering to make your plot make sense when you're constructing a story for people to follow is bad story production. You can make a movie where a logical inconsistency gets passed by so quickly while more important things are happening that it keeps the flow going and doesn't let you linger on the screwup and that's fine (like a musician missing a note and keeping playing) but we're usually not complaining about that when we talk about plot holes. We're talking specifically about when it failed so hard at keeping the story going that it took us out of the experience. There aren't many people upset that the Back to the Future franchise was logically inconsistent because when things like the lightning-struck DeLorean hovering mid-air without going 88mph happen, there's an emotional punch and a moving story beat to keep you from being taken out of it. Yes, ScreenRant and others are going to nitpick them afterward, but as "look what you missed" clickbait, not criticism. But when a female lead doesn't even TRY to get the male lead onto a giant floating door while he's freezing in the north Atlantic after a shipwreck, it takes you out of the moment. You can try to justify it with physics of the door's buoyancy, but the characters obviously didn't know that but did know the door was big enough in the moment we were seeing it on screen, and even Cameron admitted it was because the script required Jack to die. The feeling of frustration that the characters didn't do the obvious thing anyone would do in that situation undercut the feeling of loss we were supposed to get from that scene and instead a lot of us snorted in laughter when Jack sank beneath the water. Largely because we were allowed to sit with the scene long enough to realize something was wrong long before Jack died. That doesn't invalidate your unironic enjoyment of a badly written movie, but your enjoyment doesn't invalidate our experience of being taken out of it by bad writing either. It also doesn't make it good writing. There is also an in-between where something ruins a story for people with knowledge but is fine if you're ignorant of the subject. ANY story that hung on the "10% of your brain" myth, Inception's magically getting more processing power to run simulated realities faster the MORE you emulated reality inside the brain rather than the other way around, every time they mentioned "quantum" in Avengers Endgame, etc. It's easy enough to turn off the brain when Michael Bay makes a C4 explosion with gasoline to get a cool fireball instead of a high velocity shockwave, but it's a bit harder when the supposed genius scientist character tells you something as obviously dumb as claiming the oblate spheroid under your feet is flat, it's hard to keep taking the story seriously.

[@Brigand231]

It's all a bunch of hogwash, the real takeaway from music is how it makes you feel. Lyrics can help with the job of making the audience feel how they do in response to music, but not all music has lyrics. Telling someone they must feel a certain way in response to a song or phrase is wrong. We all hear and see things differently and it's ok that we do. Movies and art are the same way. It's ok if you enjoy things differently than someone else or get a different message from them. Someone trying to tell you that there is only one interpretation or right way to experience things is full of crap.

[@bobbauer7928]

I think "All Apologies" is a fantastic example of this. When Kurtd says "What else can I say, everyone is gay". I don't think he is trying to say anything about the complexities of human sexual expression. But man oh man that lyric grabs you. And then when he says "I'll take all the blame, aqua sea foam shave" He is not talking about shaving, or cutting things so close that there is nothing left, nor is he playing coy by throwing meaninglessness at us, because it really feels like he means something. ANd that really comes across when you hit the chorus "In the sun, in the sun I feel as one. Married. Buried". That line hits hard, but I don't really know what it means. ANd I don't think I am supposed to. It just feels meaningful. So thanks for pointing out this new perspective on lyrics.

[@Bowblaxian_Tricknology]

This guy doesn't know wtf he's talking about. Don't listen to him. Please.

[@slumburger1145]

This is a good chunk of what makes Sonic music with lyrics so great

[@Kalancodragon]

Was going to say basically the same thing myself. Sonic music is almost all vibes, and since a lot of those lyrical songs are final boss music, having said vibes take front and center and the lyrics being something you don't need and shouldn't be paying close attention to is pretty ideal use-case.

[@charliekahn4205]

The lyrical version of Emerald Coast that no one has heard of somehow also applies

[@pizzzaeater1425]

a great modern example of vibes lyrics is the band QUEEF JERKY. like that's literally the entire musical concept around the band: don't think about it too hard, prioritize fun and feeling over technicalities and semantics. they really just say stuff because it sounds funny or cool in the context of the song. i'd give a specific example but literally all of their songs are like that, just pick any of them lol. they curate some really good full album experiences too, and they're never too long, so if you're up for it i highly recommend just blindly jumping into one of their albums - and remember to listen to the album on its own terms! i really think QJ is about to bring on an underground revolution in music, and i, for one, am here for it!

[@misterrkalebhimself]

This feels like it applies to my favorite band Angels & Airwaves. Tom DeLonge often writes lyrics that are vaguely epic, passionate, or dreamlike, but when you actually dig into it, there isn’t really anything super specific being said, rather an emotion being invoked. And very effectively in my opinion! It’s like Chris Nolan said (and also the quote from Tenet), “don’t try to understand it, just feel it.”

[@vocalathletics]

Sounds like David Lynch!

[@padmakshkhandelwal1832]

That sounds like Yoda talking about the force: "Think not, feel it".

[@lennyfacebutnotreally3198]

"Id purpose", "Twilight of the gods" and "God shattering star" from fire emblem awakening, shadows of valentia and three houses respectively

[@DCaseyTucker]

4:04 love the Nethack/Rogue reference there

[@icarusgaming6269]

Hip-hop has had this figured out for a while, although you may want to describe it as a variation because 1. It's often lacking in the sincerity department, and 2. The spectacle comes primarily from the cleverness of the wordplay rather than the evocative density of the individual words, which is why I usually call these "wordplay songs." In Bad Meets Evil - Welcome 2 Hell, when Ryan hits us with the: "Guess who just came through to blast you bitches? With the ratchet, the book of Matthew, a book of matches Lighting 'em under white linen" He's not actually establishing a running religious metaphor, he's just using the violence and destruction of the referenced text to paint himself as a flame-wielding force of nature in the most densely creative way possible, which is why in the following phrase under the same rhyme scheme: "You 'bout to have to admit it They pass you the mic, ask you spit it And you got handed your own ass, your ass in your own hands I'm sure they gon' laugh when you go into to the bathroom with it" He abruptly drops the metaphor, switches to casual language, and deftly maneuvers his way around this common turn of phrase from every angle to point out how badly his opponent just got destroyed from the previous phrase. He achieves the same effect with both evocative and casual language, so clearly to him it's just a tool for when you need it. Solving each little puzzle offers a morsel of meaning, but it's so surface level and devoid of narrative progression that the song in as a whole needs to rely on other factors to succeed. The throughline from one punch to the next is tenous at best, but it all serves this aire of badassery that only his relentless staccato flow could create

[@katiekelly6570]

Gotta be one of the greatest set of vibes lyrics is System of a Downs Vicinity of Obscenities. "banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie" followed directly by "Is there a perfect way of holding your baby?"

[@pAWNproductionsDE]

Supposedly that song was inspired by an art movement called "Dadaism", which was purposefully nonsensical

[@a-s-greig]

​@@pAWNproductionsDEnonsensical is the claim, obscurantist in practice.

[@a-friendly-ghost]

i feel like quite a few of the songs from patricia taxxon’s “the flowers of robert mapplethorpe” might fit this idea. the first time i and a lot of others i know listened to it, for a lot of it the meaning was indecipherable, but the emotions came through forcefully clear. and while some of these are narratives that are just written with convoluted language, other songs really are just vibes given words! while i find it really fun to sit down and try and find what i feel like the meaning is, individual lines don’t really come into this, moreso just the general feeling they evoke IM FRESH GOT MINUTES IN THE GREENLIGHT BADUM TISH HOT FIGURES WITH A LEAN BITE GIRLS GOTRA FIGHT. GIRL’S ON SIGHT GOT A HUNDO MAKING CARAMILLO DYNAMITE

[@TheDutchCreeperTDC]

I've noticed that a lot of modern drum n bass songs have this kind of vibe lyrics where they just dump a bunch of impressive sounding words related to space on you usually in third person as if their interplanetary trip is a shared experience they're having with the whole crowd of the rave they would be playing it at. Sometimes my brain suddenly becomes hyper aware of this as I am listening and that can turn the experience from an epic one into a really silly one in a split second and I think that's kind of a shame.

[@sebastiansanchez4590]

The part I was left unconvinced, was about how vibe songs need to go strong on the instruments. There are many vibe songs that go with a calm, stressed, or loss vibes, "bailando con mi virginidad" by porter(yeah it's in spanish, but it's the best example i could think of)

[@somethingforsenro]

two words: bill wurtz. all of his songs are inherently based on vibes and give the impression of meaningfulness without meaning.

[@somethingforsenro]

in addition to this, a very extreme edge case, but i think it still fits: the gibberish lyrics in some nintendo songs (such as the discography of dj kk from animal crossing, and most of the splatoon ost) have no meaning, but they're not quite the same as going "hummina hummina", because the meaningless lyrics are implied to HAVE meaning in the universe. it's almost like listening to music in a language you don't understand, except it's specifically written for people who don't speak the language. you're supposed to read it for meaning based on vibes. so, while it IS 'transparently meaningless', it has a self-assured feeling of meaning that i think lines up well.

[@potatojuiceultra]

​@@somethingforsenro YES SPLATOON AND BILL WURTZ MENTIONED, 2 of my favorite musics ever I do think there is a lot of meaning to Bill Wurtz's music, or at least more than people give him credit for. but it still 100% fits in this category, how else are you gonna analyze "Got some boats on my plane, in the hotel that im stayin" and Triple Dip from Splatoon 3 - idk what they are actually saying but they could not possibly be more clear about how they want me to feel about it

[@AshZucchini8168]

I keep forgetting that the “I am the Eggman” lyric is originally from the beatles instead of from Sonic Adventure 2

[@mr.beaverchair3622]

"The Sound of Silence" is pretty obviously about social fragmentation and isolation in a capitalist society. I mean, the line you chose to highlight ("the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made") is probably one of the most pointed lines in the whole song and about as far from "just vibes" lyrics as it gets.

[@verdragon5591]

I'd like to nominate Tally Hall's Turn the Lights Off for my favorite example of vibes lyrics; they're _just_ coherent enough to suggest _something_ but are still broad enough not to be very specific on what that something is

[@a-s-greig]

That 'something' is a lot of anxiety around puberty and relationships, if we're going by the music video.

[@musicaltheater8942]

I feel like most of their songs are like that, like you can clearly hear that they’re trying to say something you just have no idea what that thing is ever

[@gripen777]

Also Chemical Overreaction by Will Wood. There's a narrative, but again it's very broad

[@nnnArchive]

Agreed!

[@kilo3989]

Love this song; I know it in the context of a really good Critical Role AMV so its semi-nonsensical lyrics are always gonna be tied up in that for me 😊

[@canibehelped]

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but prisencolinensinainciusol is a great example of a vibes song, as that was literally the point. It was written by an Italian artist to sound like English, while not being so. It's believed he did this because he thought that Italians would vibe (pun intended) with whatever sounds good, even if they couldn't understand it

[@mhyzon1]

Every time I listen to that song, I feel like I’m having a stroke. 😅

[@TehAwesomer]

Searched the comments for this one. 👌

[@Randy14512]

The composer said he wrote it to musically express the feeling of listening to music in a language you do not know because he enjoyed listening to American music before he learned english

[@vit78ify]

Great video, though from the title I thought it was gonna be about something completely different (my bias though, because I love EDM and hear many people who hate it cite the "bad lyrics" as a reason). I thought you were going to talk about lyrics that are written primarilly to sound good, without much care (but still some) for the meaning itself. This is very common in EDM, but I see it a lot in other genres as well. Just to give an example that has been actually confirmed by the lyricist, for the song Cola by CamelPhat and Elderbrook, Elderbrook has said that the instrumental was pretty much completed when they called him to help with the lyrics and vocals and he already knew the lyrics would have to serve primarily a phonetic function (sound good) so he came up with the phrase "she sips the coca cola", thought it sounded good and built the rest of the lyrics around it. Also, in EDM, sometimes the lyrics are just a single phrase or a couple phrases repeated over and over serve as just one of the many sound samples available to the artist.

[@CanadaWaxSolvent]

Thank you for this. Skinny Puppy would be a good example of this especially songs like Assimilate, Deep Down Trauma Hounds, and Human Decease (S.K.U.M.M).

[@stephenmarsh6746]

and most of Nitzer Ebb as well.

[@RichardCarlsson]

@@stephenmarsh6746 @CanadaWaxSolvent I also immediately thought of Skinny Puppy, but I think most of their songs are disqualified because while the lyrics are disjointed flow of consciousness things, you're usually left with an idea of what it's all about; they're more like free form poems. In that way, Nitzer Ebb are a better fit in this context.

[@lleroy2312]

I remember watching an interview with Will Wood a while ago, and he was talking about his song Red Moon. After talking about some of the thoughts that inspired it, he also said how some parts were him just experimenting with imagery, "playing with colors" as he described it, and compared it to an abstract painting. I think that has a lot to do with the idea of this video, that lyrics don't need to have a narrative or specific idea behind them to be meaningful, but that you can experiment with language and imagery to still create really powerful.

[@slinky6415]

i love that you called rob zombie robert thats so funny for some reason

[@luasaturni3092]

A horror tiktoker I follow exclusively refers to him as robert zombert

[@happyapple5429]

Sounds of silence has a clear and deliberate story

[@tylerhackner9731]

I am the walrus is a great song precisely because of how deliberately odd everything is including the lyrics

[@SamBrockmann]

Or it's just a sh*t song by a sh*t band who harmed the cultural integrity of our civilization.

[@gojifan54gaming15]

I was thinking that too, lmao

[@randomjunkohyeah1]

I dunno how it can be hard to understand that it’s deliberate surrealism, like you don’t “accidentally” stumble into writing stuff like that

[@SamBrockmann]

@@randomjunkohyeah1 , yes, it's not about a vibe. It's meant specifically as mockery of people overthinking lyrics. It's also, imho, a horrible song, but that's besides the main point.

[@althealligator1467]

I don't know why 12Tone presents this concept as though it's anything new. Feeling over meaning has been a thing forever, and anyone who considers those lyrics bad can often be considered pretty tasteless. Like, why use Tenet, of all things, as an example? This concept, basically the philosophical concept of qualia, has been around forever. Thing is, feeling and meaning aren't mutually exclusive. You don't have to choose to do one. The lyrics most often considered best do both.

[@karabearcomics]

This video was making me think, as videos about music often do, about Pink Floyd. Most of their songs are not vibe songs, as they're well known for their concept albums and such, but one I can think of can be absolutely seen as a vibe song: "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". It sounds meaningful overall, but it's really random lines from Poems of the Late T'ang. However, the vibe is distinct, and when you're listening you do feel like there's something being said, but you can't put your finger on what he's trying to say. Also notable as the only studio version of any of their songs featuring all five band members. Sure, I'd be hard-pressed to be able to distinguish which guitar is Barrett's and which is Gilmour's, but that's just how it is, especially since the former was deteriorating and the latter had some time to go before he truly came into his own.

[@efficiencygaming3494]

I've always described "vibes lyrics" as lyrics that contribute to the _feeling_ of the song rather than the _meaning._ In that sense, you can think of them as being more like a musical instrument than lyrics. It's a lyrical style I've come to appreciate a lot more in recent years. I think a lot of shoegaze lyrics would fall under that category. Being a genre that is all about aesthetics, you would expect the lyrics to enhance the music rather than have a meaning meant to be taken at face value. Trying to find any actual meaning in shoegaze songs can be extremely difficult.

[@BloggerMusicMan]

I love this video so much. It brought back so much I love about music and enhanced my love of it. "Idioteque" by Radiohead is a really interesting example of "vibes lyrics" that I love. The generally apocalyptic feel of the individual lines fits so well with the instrumental behind it. Each line makes no sense individually or with each other, but if you take them as a "vibe," it makes total sense. As a broad idea, I actually think hip-hop fits this in some ways. Obviously there are coherent stories in hip-hop, but even when it is this way, the sound of the words often tells more of a story than the words themselves. I often find when I read hip-hop lyrics, the impact is nowhere near as great as when I hear them in a song. When Mobb Deep say "my gunshots will make you levitate," on a record, you feel like you're in a dark alley being followed and about to get shot. On the page, it doesn't have anything like the same impact.

[@davidg5898]

Sigur Ros took it to the next level with their "Hopelandic" language. It's just syllables that sound like they _could_ be Icelandic, but aren't actual words. The vocalizations are part of the musical landscape, but I guess words just wouldn't suffice.

[@RaccoonHenry]

I love this video, goo goo G'joob!! also, Yellow Ledbetter is THE example of "vibes lyrics", there's not even an official lyrics version - Eddie Vedder just makes vaguely word-shaped sounds dripping and oozing with feeling and he SELLS IT.

[@inkmime]

I'm so glad you mentioned Dragula in the context of vibe lyrics because it's basically the perfect song for a destruction derby or vehicle combat game. A remix of it was in Twisted Metal 4 and I still have the idea of a gameplay music video for Brigador for it playing in my head.

[@zoey-oey-oeyd4020]

my favorite vibes lyrics are "can you picture that" by dr. teeth and the electric mayhem. the entire soundtrack of the muppet movie (1979) did not need to go that hard but no lyrics will ever be better than "i lost my heart in texas, northern lights affects us, i keep it underneath my hat / aurora borealis shinin' down in dallas, can you picture that?" it means absolutely nothing but the vibes are unmatched. the song is literally just vibes.

[@Nakia11798]

Definitely vibes, but it sounds romantic somehow, or like a breakup?

[@Budjarn]

I think a lot of EDM has vibes lyrics. Tropic Love by Diviners is one of my favourites: “I remember the ocean Memories die out so hard We were travelling mountains Just to find the loudest seas We settled down by the fire Knowing we could aim higher But we didn’t know that yet So if you want something to hold on to Gotta find it first But here I am ‘Cause I’ve been laying under palm trees Waiting for the summer Knowing there’s nowhere to go ‘Cause I am happy on this island Wanna be my funland? I don’t ever want to leave I’m in a tropic love”

[@jehmarxx]

I once wrote a song as a kid where I repeatedly chanted "Get the magnet" because it sounds cool, despite not making any sense.

[@skalra63]

Sounds amazing when song in the style of lamb of godd

[@yaitz3313]

"...can take many forms." -draws an Andalite Absolute top-tier. I love these tiny little gags, they're great.

[@porgy29]

I feel like foreign language songs that cross over can often unintentionally become "vibes songs" especially if they have some English (in the US) in them or the culture has a limited knowledge of the language. I think the big example of this is Psy's Gangnam Style. That is a song that did have a real meaning, but unless you both knew Korean and were familiar with South Korean culture you had very little chance of picking up what it was. But it was still really popular because of the vibe it had.

[@Decopunk1927]

Boppin and headbangin to upbeat Japanese songs that are actually about depression

[@badbeardbill9956]

We do that with English songs wdym

[@badbeardbill9956]

But yeah it’s cool how songs from other cultures work in one’s own

[@SameAsAnyOtherStranger]

Too cool that the first example used is a song by King Crimson. Although I wouldn't describe any song lyrics by King Crimson that weren't contextually deliberate any more "vibe" than any other. "String of Pearls" by Soul Asylum goes from a very cohesive storyline spanning the entire lifetime of a pair of Siamese twins (conjoined twins to be PC) and then crashes the timeframe into the span of less than a day with the last few lines. In a way, that's the most vibe thing ever.

[@marenjones6665]

Someone once said that music is how we decorate time. If that's the case, your "vibes" lyrics would be a kind of collage. A selection of words and tones, out of context, to form a larger image, perhaps abstract, perhaps concrete. To take a couple of your examples. "bullet hole through your fist," We have a couple pieces cut from the cloth of human violence, put together because they are a color. "The people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made" looks like a complete picture from a grammatical eye but it's formed from two different colors, the artificiallity a physical thing against spiritual behavior. Also, Kiki and Bouba have a lot going on here too.

[@pedroivog.s.6870]

This reminds me of concrete music and experimentalism. They don't have lyrics at all, but the melody and other features aren't obvious as well, the whole song is portraying some weird vibe that not always is pleasant, nor beautiful.

[@tskmaster3837]

"I didn't understand the lyrics. Therefore they have no meaning." "I was stone and he was wax so he could scream and still relax. Unbelievable. And we frightened the small children away."

[@jasonremy1627]

Beck's "Loser" is the ultimate vibe song.

[@MaladyKayjo]

Sundial by Lemon Demon, absolute vibe lyrics perfection “ somehow something to set my sundial backwards tilted and upside down No the shadow in this point in time right out of town” “I don’t remember what it is that I just said to you i’ve got Anubis on my back and something in my shoe don’t walk backwards don’t be jealous you’re so bloody overzealous” And then, at the very end, the song calls itself out “don’t walk forwards don’t be silly you’re the heel call Achilles Don’t enjoy this private screening this one doesn’t have a meaning” Literally, none of this song makes any sense whatsoever and yet people try to interpret it and read it into it and you can kind of sort of read a story out of it but that’s not the point because the story just really does not make any fucking sense, there’s no story there’s no meaning, just vibes that sound really fucking poetic and a little bit goofy but it’s amazing It’s not really tongue and cheek about it either, and it seems to be a weird level of sincerity in the meaninglessness of it, I can imagine Neil was trying to come up with lyrics for a song, but couldn’t and ultimately just said things that sounded deep, but just didn’t have any meaning behind them and he might’ve been depressed at the time so there might’ve been a bit of frustration behind them, which you can almost kind of here in The “This one doesn’t have a meaning” lyrics and lyrics are just really cool and smart and clever while meaning nothing at all

[@a-s-greig]

If we're talking *Lemon Demon,* there's an even cooler example in "Word Disassociation"

[@gingercore69]

Great video! Reminded me of something i kinda obsess about... Not exactly the same topic but this reminded me of "arjonismos"... A lyrical concept named after the famous songwritter Ricardo Arjona... Its related to specific nonsense lyrics in wich something contradicts itself to sound deeper... Some ricardo arjons examples come from the same song actually... El problema no es problema(the problem is no problem) Como deshacerme de ti si no tengo?(how do i throw you away if i dont have you?) Como alejarme de ti si estas tan lejos?(how do i get far from you if you are so far away?) Como encontrarle una pestaña a lo que nunca tuvo ojos?(how do i find eyelashes on something that never had eyes?) Have in mind Arjona and his Arjonisms are not very well liked, but its still an interesting topic if you want to give it a look

[@IridiumTurtle]

Sound of silence and losing my religion are very meaningful, they are based mostly on vibes but they were written with intent.

[@SpookyLuvCookie]

I'm reminded of David Byrne's comment "The lyrics are there to make you listen to the music for longer." even though this is a symptom of successful pop music. I'm sure we've all been moved by songs all the time, only later to absorb the lyrical meaning that is swimming beneath the surface (yes I'm deliberately using Thom Yorke style imagery there) ... having a story of sorts in which one must 'reach out' to find meaning, rather than a more explicit message that leaves no room for your personal interpretation. Great to see another wonderful video.

[@Religion0]

There's also that Japanese song writer who uses a mishmash of Japanese, Latin and just sounds specifically to have a chorus that vibes really good. I don't remember her name at the moment, to my chagrin.

[@humanhumanson-jr8sk]

just reminding you that you said this 2 months ago because i'm hoping you might remember

[@drewjohnston4309]

You think Bohemian Rhapsody has a narrative? I thought for sure it would be the definitive example of a vibe song. All vibes, no meaning. Wait, you think Sounds of Silence has less of a narrative than Bohemian Rhapsody? What?

[@Inverse_to_Chaos]

Roger Taylor (Queen drummer/vocalist) has described the lyrics to BoRhap as “self-explanatory [with] a bit of nonsense in the middle.”

[@josiethompson5739]

Every line "Burning Down the House" is literally just a string of idioms that mean nothing when read sequentially

[@Festus171]

What a fantastic video! I admit I was listening to Steely Dan when I started your video. Geeze, those guys really understood Vibe Lyrics. Great presentation and explanation of something that most people don't even think about. I was one of those ppl always trying to find out what was the meaning or symbolism behind the lyrics was.... when the real answer was "Who f-ing cares? Just enjoy the experience of listening to it!"

[@JeanieD]

I was going to suggest Steely Dan, but I don’t think their (Fagan’s?) lyrics are purely vibe. They just have a lot of lines that, by themselves, seem to be heading that way. But there’s always an underlying narrative, however vaguely it is conveyed. At least, to my mind.

[@alphaomega6062]

@@JeanieD If you listen to Walter Becker's solo stuff he mixed vibe with somewhat obscure meaning that meant something to him it would seem if not to the listener. When he and Donald Fagen worked together I've read that they often went for how the words sounded as much as their meaning. "I have never met Napoleon but I plan to find the time"

[@alphaomega6062]

I came to the comments to mention Steely Dan. I guess their genius works on both levels as pure vibe but with a meaning you can sort of discern even if the words don't seem to make sense when you analyse them - when you hear them in the song they work. kzbin.info/www/bejne/kInLhqKGbtl9fbc She has the answer! "How do you make sense without making sense?"

[@theepicosity]

Vibes lyrics are a super big part of electronic music! Lyrics aren't very prevalent in genres like dubstep and dnb, so when they do show up, they lack any sort of context within the song; they are there simply because they sound cool! A good example of this is "Bangarang" by Skrillex, which has the repeating line "Shouts to all my lost boys, we rowdy": if there were more lyrics in the song, it might be clear what this means, but there isn't. The lyrics are just there to add a new texture to the song and give people something to sing along to.

[@stanleyschicken]

the idea of “vibes lyrics” I think explains exactly why i like Miracle Musical. in my mind, it checks every box i can think of from this video: a group that minimalizes lyrical meaning in favor of intense vibes as someone who has trouble understanding lyrics just by listening i resonate really well with vibes lyrics and am incredibly grateful that you put this concept into words. ty ❤

[@8pierrot89]

Shout out to Dream Sweet in Sea Major!

[@a-s-greig]

It's Now and Never; A reverie endeavor Awaits somnambulant directives To take the helm

[@scottlarson1548]

Brian Eno recommended writing lyrics that *almost* make sense. He never wrote completely literal lyrics and he never wrote complete nonsense lyrics. He said that Hendrix's "Little Wing" is a great example of that style.

[@tulicloure]

I know it's your own definition, but I'd personally not have limited "vibes lyrics" with a lot of the extra stuff you added in. A chill, simplistic song would still fit a certain "vibe", after all, so I don't see why meaningless lyrics designed to go with that that wouldn't qualify. And good point about meaninglessness in art being such a stigma nowadays!

[@Wenugo1]

Yeah, "maximalist" was a weird addition. Like, vibe lyrics can only create one kind of vibe.

[@Snargloffin]

I am obsessed with the planets, especially these less popular ones, my favorite being Mercury. This breakdown was an amazing insight into his intentions as I am an aspiring film composer. Thank you!

[@CodyGratner]

I feel like The KLF fits this rather well. What words are there, they’re kinda in on “the joke” … I guess. But they are absolutely delivered with conviction!! Especially with Extreme Noise Terror playing 3AM Eternal, really pushes that whole vibes lyrics idea.